1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communication systems, and more particularly, to a method that independently operates a plurality of user functions according to various types of input signals.
2. Description of the Related Art
Portable terminals refer to devices that can support a call function. They are widely applied to various areas as they are convenient to use and portable. These portable terminals have been equipped with various input systems to provide user functions. An example of the input systems that are used in portable terminals is a touch screen including a touch panel and a display unit. If the portable terminals are equipped with a touch screen, they process operations, related to a user's touches on a particular image displayed on the display unit, via the touch panel, generate a corresponding event, and control an application program corresponding to a user function based on the event.
Conventional portable terminals, however, need very complicated input motions on their touch screen to operate a plurality of user functions. For example, while a portable terminal user is executing one of the message checking function and the image searching functions, the user needs to generate a plurality of input signals to perform other tasks. That is, the user must generate various types of touch events to output a menu screen of menu items on a display unit to select one of the menu items or to search a message or image from the selected menu item. In addition, since the contents, information, menus, etc., are frequently changed on the display unit of the portable terminals, the user may easily lose the connection between the current task and other tasks not displayed on the display unit.